MAGA Doesn’t Want Faith—It Wants Validation
Real faith demands humility.
I’ve spent a good part of the last week reflecting on my own faith as a Catholic after Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the Pope, the whole bizarre AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, and then seeing Sean Hannity say he no longer considers himself Catholic because the Pope is critical of Trump’s Iran war.
And the point that’s been rattling around in my head is this: if you’re leaving the Catholic Church to choose your daddy because you don’t like what the Pope is saying, then you probably weren’t much of a Catholic to begin with.
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Because here’s the thing: I’m not a perfect Catholic. Not even close. I have real disagreements with the Church. There have been long stretches where I didn’t go at all because I was frustrated with it on a whole range of issues—abortion, gay marriage, and more. I think the Church is wrong on those things.
But the one that’s most personal to me is fertility treatments like IVF, which the Catholic Church has said is “morally unacceptable.”
My wife and I struggled to have children. We’ve had many miscarriages, and I wouldn’t wish that pain on my worst enemy. We only have our son because of in vitro fertilization—because of a scientific breakthrough that helps people build families when they otherwise couldn’t. I see that as a gift. A real, tangible, divine gift that solves a very human problem.
And the Catholic Church opposes it.
I’ve read the arguments. I’ve thought about them. I’ve prayed on them. I’ve talked to people who are far deeper into Catholic doctrine than I am. And I still think that position is completely and totally ridiculous. I say that with respect—but I mean it.
I was so angry about it when my son was born that I named him something that means “gift from God,” because I wanted it to be unmistakable: no matter what any church says, that’s what he is.
And if you’ve ever met my son, he lights up every fucking room he’s in. Always a smile on his face. Feels everything deeply (just like his father.) He knows every person on the block. Everyone knows him. He’s basically the mayor of our neighborhood.
And it infuriates me that my own church thinks we were wrong to have him.
That tension—between what I believe and what my Church teaches—is real. It can create distance. It can make me cynical. It can make me not want to go to church. I understand that feeling deeply.
But here’s the difference: I don’t walk away from my faith because of it. I wrestle with it, and I figure it out. How do I use it? What is this teaching me?
So when people in the MAGA movement get offended because the Pope challenges them—on the treatment of immigrants, on war, on basic human dignity—I understand the discomfort. They’re being forced, maybe for the first time, to confront the idea that their politics and their faith are not perfectly aligned.
But instead of doing the hard work of reconciling that, they lash out.
They attack the Pope. They abandon the Church. They twist religion into something that conveniently reinforces whatever they already believed.
That’s not faith.
Faith is supposed to challenge you. It’s supposed to make you uncomfortable. It’s supposed to force you to reflect on whether you’re actually living up to what you claim to believe.
What we’re seeing from a lot of these people isn’t struggle—it’s entitlement. They want a version of Christianity that never contradicts them, never questions them, never asks anything of them except loyalty to their politics.
And when they don’t get that, they throw a tantrum.
An adult doesn’t do that. An adult sits with the tension. They work through it. They figure out what they believe and why. They don’t abandon their entire faith because one leader says something they don’t like.
But for a lot of people in this MAGA movement, faith isn’t about humility or compassion or self-reflection. It’s about control—controlling women’s bodies, controlling who people can love, attacking trans kids, and then hiding behind religion so they don’t have to defend those positions on their own merits.
It’s a shield. Not a belief system.
And that’s why this moment matters. Because when the Pope says something as basic as “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and your reaction is anger, that says everything.
It exposes the gap between the faith you claim and the worldview you actually live by.
I will always struggle with my faith. I will always have disagreements with the Catholic Church. Sometimes I’ll be angry about it. But I will always believe in trying to be a better person because of it. I still believe I have the responsibility—and the agency—to think for myself about what that means in the real world.
That’s what being an adult looks like.
What Donald Trump and his allies are doing isn’t that. It’s insecurity dressed up as conviction. It’s people trying to bend faith to serve power instead of letting it challenge them.
They don’t own faith. They don’t control it. And the louder they scream about it, the more obvious that becomes.
Thank you, Mike, for sharing your very insightful thoughts.
Mike -these words are so very true… Being faithful takes work, great communication and prayer. Running away when things get tough is the opposite of faith (I expect that from the likes of Sean Hanity and JD Vance!)